Optimism token falls 40%, prompting calls to bar dumpers from airdrops

“Why should Optimism Collective continue rewarding these kinds of mercenary actors who will dump their tokens on first sight? Why should any future airdrops reward these addresses?” an OP governance member argued.

Optimism’s freshly launched governance token, OP, has plunged 40% since peaking at $2.10, leading members of the community to discuss baring those who dumped their tokens from future airdrops.

Cointelegraph reported on Tuesday that the Ethereum layer-2 scaling solution was overwhelmed with demand for the first OP governance token airdrop, as 5% of the token supply was distributed to around 250,000 eligible users.

As per CoinGecko data, the token opened at roughly $1.43 before surging to $2.10, but as more users got their hands on the free airdrop over the day, OP dropped to as low as $1.09 before climbing back to $1.18 at the time of writing, marking a 43% drop.

Following the sharp drop of OP’s price, a member of Optimism’s governance community who goes by OxJohn put forward a proposal in the Optimism governance forum to exclude addresses that dumped 100% of their airdropped tokens. The post garnered a significant amount of attention from the community, pulling in 11,200 views, 305 replies and 595 likes.

OxJohn highlighted several addresses that received at least 32,000 OP tokens and promptly dumped them on the market, arguing that their actions are “counter-productive” to the community and diluted the governance process.

The OP hodler went on to suggest that these accounts should be barred from the next round of OP airdrops with “a public list of accounts that engage in this behavior” excluded. In their view, doing so would see the distribution of governance weight to only those who plan to actively participate.

One of the most high-profile Crypto Twitter users to weigh in was Cobie, the co-host of the UpOnly crypto podcast who has nearly 700,000 followers. He responded to the proposal in his typical satirical/mocking manner.

Cobie submitted a lengthy counter-proposal in the forum titled “Extended ineligibility for future airdrops” that was temporarily removed due to being flagged as “inappropriate” but has since been reinstated.

In it, he said that “my lack of support for this proposal is not because I disagree with the sentiment. On the contrary, it is because this proposal does not go far enough.”

However, after being prompted to provide a more serious response to the proposal, Cobie highlighted several reasons why he thinks that it’s a bad idea.

He made points such as OP’s early price being irrelevant, sellers having different motives, the possibility to sell and still engage with governance, the token being used as part of customer acquisition costs from Optimism, and the ease of making a new address to avoid restrictions.